On Working in Rural Africa

*Note: Because I am using dial up, I am currently unable to post pictures.*

Many people are wondering and asked why I was going to Benin, honestly it wasn’t that clear to me either in the beginning. Basically I wasn’t working and job prospects we not looking good and the Italian received an offer for an internship in Benin with an Italian NGO and asked me to join him, so I agreed. The NGO then offered me an internship as well. The details were sketchy at best, but I figured I had a return plane ticket that I could change at anytime, so if it was completely unbearable I would just leave.

The first day of work on Monday was interesting to say the least. The president had finally arrived from Italy and it was clear that the person responsible for managing the project locally was mismanaging funds. So here I was a recent graduate of London School of Economics, with a social science degree conducting a huge audit of three different projects, and audit that took me quite a few days and resulted in a lack of understanding of how over 10,000 Euros had been spent in only two months in rural Africa and also why nearly 3,000 Euros seemed to be missing. There were many nights when I asked how I got myself into this situation, but also many nights when I was happy for a first hand look at why development in Africa is so stagnated, albeit on this small scale.

So now my task is to create a new budget, a new accounting system, and implement some new projects, and fix the old ones. Because of the theft and/or mismanagement of funds, it has been decided that unfortunately for the rest of December we can only pay the staff their salaries. Meaning that some children who were expecting money for breakfast will not be receiving it. Some of you may be thinking this is cruel, no doubt it is sad, but even though the aim of these projects is to help people, it must also be treated as a business. And when there is no money, we cannot give what we do not have. January will bring stability to these projects and I am sure that the problems that are present now will not occur again, at least while I am here.

I hope to at least do a small Christmas party for the children. As it stands today we support 82 children, so if you have it in your heart to donate a little bit of money to help me throw a small party please let me know. Donate anything you can if possible. $20 here can go quite a long way. For those wondering if I will be donating some of my own money, of course, but I can’t donate much because I am not being paid for being here right now, so my funds are limited as well.

Thanks in advance for any help you can lend us!